Meanwhile, Down on the Farm…

After we graduated University, Dave and myself decided enough was enough and it was time to leave the country for a while. The recession was worsening, and after weeks of discussion, planning, and scraping together what little money we had, we booked plane tickets and a few weeks in a hostel, and headed off Down Under.

Things went swimmingly for seven months. We had both found good jobs that offered steady work, and with our savings had enjoyed an amazing month long road trip up the East Coast, finishing up in the tropical Cairns. When money ran low Dave took a job working for a Crazy Lady who ran an online business from her house in the middle of a rainforest, and I cleaned rooms for the the share house company that managed our accommodation. As an aside, for anyone who hasn’t cleaned rooms in 90% humidity with no air conditioning, I can tell you from experience it’s not pleasant! It’s like taking a bath in your own sweat whilst trying not to drip everywhere because you actually have to leave the room clean, rather than covered in your bodily fluids!

When even this work dried up, we used some of our fast dwindling cash to make our way to the nearest big city to try and find more steady income. This failed miserably, and when we only had enough money left for two more nights in our hostel dorm, we made the decision to get on a bus and do our time as farm hands. Like I said, its strange what you realise you’re prepared to do if the alternative is giving up.

When we arrived in Gatton, a one road town about 90kms West of Brisbane, we found work within a few hours. That meant a 6am start the next day, and preparation for a hard day’s graft. Now to find somewhere to live. Cue our mentally unbalanced land lady making an appearance. She showed us to our new house and ushered us through the front door.

“Brilliant! Can we get a key between us?”
“No, no key.”
“But what if we get locked out?”
“Just tell others not to lock the door”.

The “others” turned out to be a small colony of Koreans who also lived in the share house and barely spoke a word, but ate very strange things.

The next revelation came as she showed us to our room with a dramatic flourish. If you could actually call it a room. Ta da! On one side of the room were three oddly sized mattresses stacked one on top the other doing a lousy impression of a bed, and instead of a door, there was a curtain, which was big enough to cover roughly half of the opening. It smelled suspiciously of stale sweat. Determined not to be beaten, we took the room and promptly went about hiding our valuables… Since there was no lock on the front door and we actually had no door at all. Next, I deployed Dave to get a heavy duty can of Febreeze and some chocolate, STAT. The Febreeze turned out to be a miserable failure, but the chocolate was a God send. The room just sort of smelled of lemony sweat after that. A very specific smell that I can still vividly remember even now.

Still I thought, a little delirious by this point, IT’S TOTALLY BLOODY FINE, what’s a bit of sweat, a door curtain and a tribe of Koreans when you’re living the dream.

After repeatedly being awoken by Sex and the City reruns in the middle of the night (door curtains are no good at keeping out noise) and lying smushed up against Dave on our unsteady mattress pile, our first day as farm workers began. Typically working days on the farm were 10-12 hours long, and to work six days a week was not uncommon. The mentality of The Boss was simple, if you work hard, you stay, if you slack off and don’t pull your weight, you go home.

On our first day, after spending a few hours vigorously making up boxes for the production line of broccoli packers, we were sent out on the tractors to get planting.

While I was still trying to work out what exactly “get planting” meant, we were loaded into the back of a 4×4 and bounced across the farm to an empty field. Dave looked across at me nervously “I must admit” He said, “You’re coping a lot better than I thought you would.” I was too busy agreeing with him to actually be offended.

Right about then, I learned what “get planting” meant. We all sat in a row of yellow bucket seats, mounted behind a huge tractor. Between our legs were what can only be described as big gun barrels, and infront of us were trays of tiny broccoli plants. Our training consisted of two sentences. “Put plant into each hole. Try not to miss” Oooh goodie! I thought, dropping a plant into each hole, TOTALLY easy… Then the tractor started to move forward, and the broccoli gun barrel thing started to move round. Quite.. quickly. My thought process was thus: “Am I meant to be? Do I? Oh God! So I put more in the holes? So it? Right!” I started to grab handfuls of plants and drop them into the holes, but it was going so fast! And I was dropping them and accidentally throwing them at Dave, and myself, and it was still turning, plop plop plop plop. “OH GOD!” Grab, stuff, grab, stuff, grab, stuff. I was barely keeping up and feeling quite manic and more than a teensy stressed. “Come on! You’re going to have to do better than that!” A voice boomed from somewhere above me, though I couldn’t technically look up because then I would loose the plot completely. Grab, stuff, throw, cry, stuff, yelp, grab, drop, stuff!!! We finished the first row and I was thinking that I would quite like to go home now please, but everyone except Dave and I seemed quite rested. I was up to my elbows in mud however, and looked as if I had just undergone major trauma.

By row three however, we weren’t missing a beat, and the first time I planted a perfect row it was a very proud moment!

Working on a farm for two months taught me several things, the top three of which are as follows:

1. If you ever need to fall off a tractor, try to do so sideways. When you fly off the back of a tractor you land on your back, with your legs in the air. Not graceful, and very painful.

2. If you’re lucky enough to be planting broccoli in the sweltering heat and you have a hormonal outbust, empty plant trays make excellent weapons. Say, for example, when your boyfriend makes a remark that pushes you over the edge.

3. Rain does not mean Rained Off. Rain means “Wear this bin liner like a Poncho and get back on the tractor, there is work to be done.”

So when you think you cant go on, my motto is this: hit a loved one with a plant tray, don your poncho and KEEP GOING. It could always be worse – you could have fallen off the back of a tractor!

How to do it Wrong. So Wrong.

Unless you live under a rock, everyone in the UK will know today was A Level Results day, which spawned all kinds of news articles about grades, pass rates and the fierce competition for places at University. In addition to all the meaningful news articles however, it also created an excuse for people to write some of the most incredible rubbish I have ever read.

I’m talking about one article in particular, and today’s blog comes with some required reading. You are required to click here first, and read this highly enlightening piece about helping fledgling young adults settle in away from home.

I take issue with several items in this article outlined, for your amusement, below.

Pack a trunk
Excuse me what? Last I checked this is University we’re talking about, not Hogwarts. Has she even seen the average size of a bedroom in halls of residence? What would you actually DO with it once you’d taken all of your “antiques” out of it. Oh, and by the way, raise your hand if you’re a student and you brought antiques to Uni… That’s what I thought. Also, use of the word “chums” and “drinking games” in the same sentence does not make you down with the kids.

Avoid obvious clichés
Absolutely, totally agree. Never EVER put posters on your wall that you may genuinely like, but that others may also have. You will make no friends, and spend every Saturday night home alone, using your trunk as an impromptu table whilst counting your antiques.

Don’t wear your heart on your walls
Firstly, this sentence makes no sense. And secondly, when did students start judging potential friends by what’s stuck up on their walls? If someone wanders into your room and starts staring up at your walls whilst tutting and shaking their head, this is not OK. Evict them immediately and go to the pub with normal people instead.

Gap-year conversation starters
In theory, I’ll admit this is actually quite a good idea. Although I’m not sure how the average backpacker manages to smuggle home Mexican throws and a bunch of Bulgarian cushions, but then again I expect they had a trunk.

Food
Ah yes, I remember it so well. Sitting around with friends swapping Dehlia Smith recipes wrapped in exotic blankets, surrounded by trinkets. I am convinced this woman is childless, and has never even seen a Student. This particular sentence is hilarious: “Delia Smith’s Complete Cookery Course has probably saved millions of young lives”. Has it though? Really? Baked beans on toast definitely has, probably billions infact.

Bed moments
This is my favourite! EGYPTIAN COTTON SHEETS? JOHN LEWIS? Is this woman aware that university fees alone are about to go up to £9,000 per year? Just put a few hessian sacks down, you’ll be absolutely fine. She also didn’t get the toga party memo, which means that within 48 hours the sheets are off the bed, and worn like a weird dress in some grimy club.

Music
“A portable instrument such as a ukulele or guitar is a brilliant accessory”. This is obviously a malicious and hateful lie. I’m begging you, all future students out there, no matter how much you might want to take that adorable ukulele to Uni with you… leave it at home. Or you’ll be forever branded “That weird kid with the trunk and the tiny guitar”.

Things to Avoid
I actually found this one quite informative. I somehow knew the life size picture of David Bowie I brought with me and stuck on the ceiling above my bed gave The Wrong Message. If only this article had existed back then I would never have made such a stupid mistake. And now that you come to mention it that personal gym I tried to squeeze into my room was a really tight fit.

I’m climbing down from my satirical soap box now and ending my rant, but if the author of this article can find me ONE student with a copy of Dehlia’s Complete Cookery Course, a trunk, a tiny guitar and a bunch of antiques, I will eat my Bulgarian cushion.

The Mothering Influence

They often say that every girl, eventually, becomes her Mother. They also say that every teenager is petrified of this actually happening. I didn’t really notice it at first, but I think there’s a possibility it might be slowly happening to me.

When you’re younger and you still live under your parents’ roof, you deem everything they say to be wrong, out of touch, unfair, or ruining your life. Or all of the above.  When you move out and have your own house however, you realise that maybe they were on to a thing or two after all. Maybe it isn’t a good idea to get out of the shower and drip dry yourself on the carpet, and maybe stashing those fluffy cups of tea in your bedroom isn’t such a brilliant idea either. Something strange happens when you pay your own rent and buy your own things, you can finally imagine how your parents felt when you gouged your name into their new coffee table.

I recently had Little Sister to stay, whom I love and don’t usually harbour any murderous tendencies towards. After three days of picking up soggy cotton wool, tea bags, Q Tips, food, and various items of clothing however, I was going to kill her. “Don’t you ever put ANYTHING away?” I protested, putting the milk back in the fridge and the ice back in the freezer. Her retort? “Oright MUM! I was going to do it eventually!” …Brilliant. I even caught myself asking her if she had brushed her teeth and washed her face. She is 17, She doesn’t need me to ask her these things, She can do them on her own.

This brings me conveniently to the “OK, but not now” principle, which is employed by Teenagers worldwide. I was a big fan of this one, and never really understood the real urgency to wash the dishes now, come for dinner now, or do anything now that would involve much involuntary movement. Now I’m prone to fidgeting and need everything done five minutes ago. When I go on a cleaning frenzy at 9pm Dave has learned to stay out of my way, or look very very busy.

And I would point out that I’m still not the tidiest person. When I go to Dave’s Family Home his Mum imposes penalty points when I leave things lying around, when I reach a certain number of points I get beaten… Only kidding about the beating, but still, she felt the need to implement a penalty system, this is not a good sign.

Something else I remember from being younger is that Mum was like a super human Lie Detector. Don’t look directly at her! She’ll know… SHE’LL KNOW! She sometimes had the good grace not to say anything out loud, but still, I knew I was rumbled by the specific way she used to look at me, as if to say: “I see. I’m totally on to you. And the answer is still no, by the way.” Some of my most common lies included “Everyone elses’ Mum said yes!”, “The test results aren’t out yet” and “But Dad said yes!”. That last one never worked, just in case you were wondering.

When Dave tells a fib I can tell instantly, and I use this same look on him. He then finds something very interesting on the wall / floor/ bottom of his shoe to avoid looking directly at me. I learned from the best! Some of Dave’s most common lies include “I only had one drink”, “I don’t have a missed call from you” and “Of course I didn’t run a hose through the flat to water the plants from the bath tap”.

And the similarities don’t end there. If I happen to be walking behind a bunch of kids who are shuffling their feet along the pavement I actually have to resist the urge to slap them round the head and yell “PICK UP YOUR FEET! THAT IS SO ANNOYING!”. If I see someone chewing gum like a camel so everyone can see what they had for breakfast, again, it’s a struggle to keep the look of judgment off my face. Especially if it’s a girl, at which point the thought: “Ugh. How unladylike.” pops into my head involuntarily. I just can’t help myself.

And the real cold hard proof? I have actually just said to someone “You can’t go out like that! You’ll catch your death!”. I rest my case.

Prank or Be Pranked…

Back in the day, I didn’t have much experience playing practical jokes on people. Mostly because, apart from my Dad, people never played them on me. He did his best to prepare me for a world of Boys though, and actually convinced me that a Haggis was a hill creature that had two legs shorter than the other, to ease it’s passage round the mountains. I repeated this gem in Geography class.

When I went to Uni and started hanging around with Boys, things cranked up a notch. I don’t want to stereotype here, but generally Boys are a lot crueler to each other than girls (at least openly anyway). Girls will bond by talking about personal feelings and enjoying things they have in common, boys on the other hand are more likely to bond over the best insults they can think of for each other, or how they almost managed to push someone down the stairs.

And there I was, amongst Boys. I learned pretty fast however, and usually managed to be on the Conspiring side rather than the Receiving side of the pranks, except for one particularly horrendous incident. To offer some background, Dave and I had been dating for somewhere around the two month mark when this happened. Looking back I think perhaps it was some sort of cosmic test.

We’d just finished having a BBQ with some of Dave’s housemates, and I elected to take a shower as I stank of smoke. When I walked back into Dave’s room to get dressed, I found a note that said “Will be back in five, gone to buy milk”. Nothing unusual about that, I thought. So I proceeded to get dressed, dry my hair and generally busy myself. About ten minutes passed, and I happened to walk over to the corner of the room near the wardrobe. At this point Dave, who must have been crouched in there the whole time waiting for the perfect moment, launched himself out into the room yelling at the top of his lungs. I have never been so frightened in my WHOLE life. I genuinely thought someone was coming to slowly kill me by chopping me into tiny pieces. Horrible horrible boy. He naturally found this hilarious, and after realising I wasn’t going to die I did my best to be a good sport about it.

He got his comeuppance a little while later though. He tried the same trick on one of his housemates and jumped out from a darkened corner to scare him. This particular person’s reaction to fear was to punch Dave in the face.

Of all the pranks we played, my favourite has to be The Great Hoover Incident of 2008. When you go away on holiday you can get adapters to plug into your sockets that will only supply power to your lights during certain hours of the day, it turns the lights on and off as if someone is home. Turns out these work to turn anything on and off. So for example, if you put a hoover in someone’s wardrobe and set the timer to 3am, the hoover would turn on at this time and scare the poor resident senseless. This worked with great success, the poor guy thought someone was tunneling through his wall.

And it didn’t end there, toothpaste was replaced with icing, shoes were filled with water, extremely tight knots were tied in hoodie sleeves and rude words were covertly inserted into Uni assignments. The challenge: Prank, don’t be Pranked. It was dog eat dog, and it was important to stay alert.

It was also key to remember that even the most innocent of situations were probably traps. Someone asked me what my hoodie would look like with the hood up once. I stupidly pulled it over my head to demonstrate, only to discover it had been filled with flour.

I’m sure many of the people I knew will have hilarious examples of their own where they fell foul to a prank, so I open the floor to them…

Ode to Sisters

When I was six my Mum and Dad told me I was going to have a little sister. Much to their alarm I spent the next several hours crying my eyes out. This must be every parents worst nightmare. You wait till the perfect moment (like when you’ve just given your first born two kittens, as in my case) then you casually mention it. I’m pretty sure my reaction wasn’t exactly what they had in mind.

Six months later, Little Sister was born. I had got used to the idea at this point, but was still prepared to write my name on ALL of my toys if necessary. Just to make it quite clear to this new family member that everything was mine. All mine. No sharing.

Don’t get me wrong though, I’ve always loved my sister, but that didn’t stop both of us nipping and thumping our way through childhood. If anyone else tried however, they were dead.

When she was very young Little Sister would come with Mum to pick me up from school. If she looked like she was trying to take a nap I would be frantically instructed to try and keep her awake. I didn’t understand at the time, but I now suppose this was in the hope she might sleep through the night. So I kept her awake. Not with a story or a game, just with a quick, efficient, nip in the soft bit behind her knee.

And just so you know I’m not the only evil one, when we grew up a bit and were able to add name calling and shouting to the mix, Little Sister would be quite fond of opening her mouth and yelling, very loudly, and completely out of the blue. When a parent came to see what all the ruckus was, she would claim I had pushed her, poked her, nipped her, pushed her or perhaps called her a Bum Fluff. This particular name (which was one of my favourites) was then banned completely in our household, on pain of death. Little sister also drew all over the face of my Princess Barbie in Magic Marker and gave our Persian cat a haircut with craft scissors. It’s safe to say neither of us were angels.

And as we got older the things we used to do to annoy each other got even more convoluted. Yes I was the oldest, and I should have known better – but those of you who have younger counterparts will know that having a little sibling does things to you! By far the worst thing I ever did was convince Little Sister that Mum had abandoned us. I only owned up to this story about 3 years ago, and even though both me and my sister were grown up, my Mum looked utterly horrified. Mum had left my sister and me in the car while she went to buy a stamp and post a letter. The instant she was out of sight I turned round to Little Sister and said with all the sincerity I could muster: “Mummy has left us. We’re alone now and I’m in charge. She’s never coming back.”. My sister, knowing me well enough by now, didn’t believe me. At first. But I persevered with such dogged determination that eventually I made her cry. Just in time I might add! As Mum turned up moments later and was forced to explain to my sister that she hadn’t indulged in a bit of reckless abandonment, and had just gone for a stamp.

But as they say, time breeds tolerance, or some other such rubbish, and when I came to the realisation that there was no ultimate “winning” – regardless of how many times I was victorious in the hair pulling contest, we started to get along. A bit. It didn’t exactly happen overnight, but we got there in the end.

Over the years we have staged Spice Girl concerts (there is video evidence of this somewhere, if it ever surfaces, I suspect we will both be leaving the country), written songs with accompanying dance moves, caught lady birds, “run away from home” to the bottom of the garden and practiced makeup on each other with Drag Queen like consequences. We have become firm friends in the process.

I would also like to point out that I wouldn’t dare try any of the above on “Little Sister” now. I expect it would end badly, even if she did deface my Barbie.

The Joys of Being a Student

Now that I’ve been in full time employment for quite a while, the time has come to look back on my student days fondly, and wonder how on earth so much time has passed between now and then. I’m suddenly a grown up who pays council tax, and worries about how much the price of food and petrol is rising.

Back in the day a 10am lecture seemed to be pretty much impossible, getting up PRE 9am? Scandalous. How times have changed. 9am is now considered a generous lie in on weekends. In my final year of University I lived with three boys, and this was definitely an education. Amongst other things they kept a pet mould. Yes. A pet mould. It’s (his?) name was Moul Dee and it lived in our back yard, proudly expanding in a pint glass. I did point out that this was utterly vile, and they didn’t actually disagree, but nevertheless it stayed put, and was poked fondly at regular intervals in order to map it’s progress. Not your average pet, but still, a member of the family.

And then there’s student cuisine. Vegetables are somewhat of a rarity, and the average meal usual involved bread or pasta of some sort. At one point the boys unwrapped a frozen pizza, and upon deciding that it wasn’t “topping rich” enough, covered it in a pack of sausages, a packet of bacon, sandwich ham, meatballs, a block of cheese, and a few tomatoes. The key to student eating is as much meat as possible, coining the phrase “When in doubt, add meat”. On another occasion we had a bunch of eggs that were about to go off, as well as a few other questionable items in the fridge that were passed their best. And yes, many of these items were meat related. To kill several birds with one stone The Omelette was born. The single most beastly eggy creation that has ever been.

And the consumption of Things That Are Bad For You was by no means confined to food. It’s no surprise that students are fond of a drink or two, but one of my housemates excelled himself after being knocked off his bike and splitting his chin. He was helped home, and promptly passed out on the floor. Possibly because of shock, or the sight of his own blood. When he came to, I patched him up with cotton wool and surgical sticky tape. Two hours later he was out on the town, drinking like a student.

Miraculously not one of us ended up with any kind of food poisoning, despite the suspicious ceiling leak we had in the corner of the kitchen, which was contained only by one large saucepan to catch the brown roof sludge.

This brings me conveniently to my next item. The Student House. The type of house you live in when you’re a student is the sort of place you would never be willing to live in at any other point in your life. At the time though, nothing about your living arrangements seem that bad. I remember the first flat I moved into as a student and proudly showing my Mum round, thinking it was the best thing ever. I also remember thinking she didn’t look all that impressed when I had concluded the grand tour of all four rooms. Who knows- it could have been the rising damp, the smell or the paper thin walls. Another student phenomenon is the Landlords. When a landlord knows they’re housing a bunch of students there’s a distinct slipping of standards, as it is apparently a well known fact that students have no standards and therefore don’t really deserve much in the way of attention.

The landlord that took care of our house in the final year was possibly one of the strangest people I have ever met. He decided that he needed to refit all of the doors during our tenancy, in order to “meet fire and safety standards”. What this actually translated to was “I plan to get a load of doors delivered to your house and store them in your porch”. And there they stayed, for at least 6 weeks before he decided to hire the labour to fit them. The joiner then hacked far too much off the top of our kitchen door (which is arguably the most important of all fire doors in a house) and we could see through the huge gap he had created. This did spawn an awesome new game however, and we used to throw various household items through the gap in the door. If you hit someone, you got 1 point. Brilliant! You can’t say we weren’t resourceful.

We still made an effort when it came to moving out though, and we did our best to make sure it was spic and span. I was in charge of cleaning the bathroom… Raise your hand if you’ve ever lived with three boys. No? Well let me tell you, never have I encountered so many unfriendly, curly, little hairs in my life. I believe I’m actually traumatised.

Despite the pet mould, the leaky ceiling and the curly hairs, being a student represented some of the best times of my life. It affords you with a kind of carefree attitude that you can somehow never get back after you start working. I suggested growing our own pet mould to recapture some of the memories, but Dave said no. Spoil sport.

The Weird and the Wonderful…

Picture the scene. You’re on your way home from a hard day’s work on public transport and you’re exhausted. You just want to be left alone. Suddenly, you look up and see someone eccentric/weird/apparently possessed getting on at the next stop. I don’t know about you but my first thought is usually “Oh god… please don’t sit next to me… I just want to read my book… PLEASE sit somewhere else…”. I might sink a bit lower in my seat and cover my face with my book, but they will inevitably, always, sit next to me. For some reason I seem to attract the weird and the wonderful.

I discussed this phenomenon with my friends back in sixth form, after I was asked “Would you like to buy some crack?” at 10:30am outside a perfectly nice cafe in Jesmond. To compound matters, the weekend before we had gone for a limo ride for someone’s birthday and the driver had taken a “shine” to me, and tried to pick me up and put me over his shoulder. “Perhaps its the way you hold yourself”, said one “or maybe it’s the way you walk?” said another. Firstly, this is not constructive, as I have no idea how to walk in such a way that would discourage The Strange Ones. And secondly, is that really a thing? I sincerely hope not, or there’s no hope for me.

And if you don’t believe me I have plenty of examples! One of my favourites was when I was minding my own business walking down the street when an elderly gentleman stopped me and asked me for the time. Not that strange you might think. I got as far as saying “Its quarter to…” When he shouted: “STOP! Will you have dinner with me?” Crafty or what? The old Make Her Think You Want The Time When You Want To Ask Her Out trick.

Then there was the time the hobo stole my sandwich. No, that isn’t the title of a Country and Western song. A hobo actually stole my sandwich. I was sitting in a cafe on Campus in my second year of uni, once again minding my own business, when a homeless man wandered in. I didn’t even notice him at first, but then he sat down next to me and just stared right at me. This made him a bit harder to ignore. As my predisposition is to be polite, I asked him if there was anything I could do for him. What became clear next was that he had no teeth and that I had no idea at all what he was saying. Erm. The two women behind the counter were watching us closely at this point, sensing something was probably amiss. I had got to know them pretty well over the two years and they were confident I didn’t have any toothless hobo friends. When the man lunged at my sandwich and grabbed my wrist, they decided it was time to call Campus Security. They never found him, and I’m secretly quite glad. I hope he got to enjoy my BLT in peace.

And it doesn’t end there – but this is a blog post not a book so I wont go on! You’ll just have to wait till a later date to hear more about the man I met in a shopping centre who invited me to Christmas with him in Jersey, and the gay mobility scooter salesman who kissed me on the lips.

Never a dull moment!

The Perils of Car Ownership

I was what you would call a slow learner when it came to driving. I was, and still am, very conscious that I’m basically in charge of a large clump of metal on wheels that could potentially kill people if I press down on the wrong pedal or lose concentration for a split second. This fear basically meant that the first few driving lessons were what I would call “white knuckle”, where I gripped the steering wheel so hard that my fingers turned a weird colour and I squeaked nervously if we got above 30mph.

I’ve since got a lot better, and I did actually pass first time. Some nice passer by even clapped my parallel park the other day! They were being totally genuine… in case you were thinking otherwise.

When I first passed my test and got my first car, I think I had 4 separate flat tyres in the space of a year. If you ask the average person “How many flat tyres have you ever had?” They’re likely to say around four, I managed this driving around in my local vicinity within 365 days of being able to legally drive. This drove my Dad nuts, and I think he must have thought I drove in such a way that meant I ricocheted from one opposing pavement to the other, using my poor wheels as bumper car buffers. And my subsequent favourite thing to do, was to drive on these flat tyres. “Did you not NOTICE it was flat?!” my Dad said, after he had bailed me out on the third occasion, this time in the Metro Centre car park. “Yeaaaaah! That’s why it’s still in the parking space!” I retorted. Whilst saying this I had to shuffle to the left so I was obscuring the black line I had drawn with my front left wheel, in a loop, around the car park. It’s totally fine, I don’t think he even noticed.

I seem to have grown out of this phase of my life now, and although they used to be a religious quarterly activity, I haven’t had a flat tyre since.

I am rather fond of a good Overheat though. Those are always fun. About a month ago I decided it was about time I drove from London to Newcastle. I’ve lived down here almost two years and I’ve always managed to avoid having to do it so far. Either the train is cheaper or Dave drives. So when an impromptu visit beckoned, I thought that there was no time like the present. For those of you who don’t know, London to Newcastle will ideally take you somewhere around six hours. It took me nine and a half. Those were some of the sweatiest, boring hours of my life. The first snag was a mammoth amount of traffic just trying to break away from London and start the journey. This in turn lead to my car overheating to such an extent that the needle on the temperature gauge was actually trying to jump clean off the dial. Luckily, I had the good sense to pull over and kill the engine before any damage was actually done. Time for another sheepish phone call to Dad (Yes – I know I’m 25. But I am not a mechanic!). It went something like this:

Me: “Hi Dad, slight incident. The engine has overheated. Don’t worry though I pulled over and I’ve switched everything off so I don’t blow anything up. I think its just because I’ve been in traffic so long”

Dad: “It still shouldn’t overheat… Did you check the water before you left?”

Me: (smug) “Yes! Like you said: Oil, tyre pressures, diesel and windscreen wash!”

Dad: “…but what about water?”

Me: “…you didn’t mean windscreen wash?”

Dad: *despairing silence*

I am the worst car owner EVER. I was under the impression that engine coolant was a closed system and did not need to be checked. Did you know, boys and girls, that this is not the case?

Dad: “OK, don’t panic. Did you bring any water with you just in case?”

Me: (looks at a bottle of Evian which clearly won’t even touch the sides) “Yes absolutely. I’m prepared!”

Dad: “OK good, how much do you have?”

Me: (awkward pause) “About 500mls… but I have drank some.”

Dad: *A longer, even more despairing silence*

Luckily the Highway Patrol came to my rescue with an actual, proper, carafe of water and I waited till the engine had cooled, studied the manual, and diligently topped up the coolant level. The rest of the journey was pretty uneventful in comparison, but talk about a baptism of fire.

I am now determined to learn a bit more about how an engine works, as out of principle I hate driving around in something every day and having no clue how its doing what its doing. Until then though… there’s long suffering Dad!

 

Congratulations! It’s a Hamster.

It feels like baby fever is in the air at the moment, and a lot of people I know are pregnant or have just had babies. I’m over the moon for every one of them, but I can’t help wondering whether I’ll actually be any good at it myself when the time comes. To me, a baby’s head smells like, well a baby’s head.

When I ask people about the thought of me “with child” the answers range from a sweet “I’m sure you would be wonderful” (Dave – fear of backlash) to a more realistic “You would probably leave it in Tesco’s” (Sister – does not care about backlash). I would like to clarify that last statement by saying that I’ve never ACTUALLY left any baby in Tescos, or any other retail establishment for that matter. I don’t actually know where this idea came from, but its now a running joke in my family.

The nearest I’ve got so far is two gold fish, two hamsters and a kitten (not all at once). I was looking after the fish for a friend when I lived in a share house in Australia. For some unknown reason she had decided it would be a good idea to get fish whilst travelling. Anyone who’s thinking the same, let me tell you it isn’t, fish lack portability. Anyway, when she came back and tried to take them again, brandishing a freezer bag in one hand and a bottle of Smirnoff in the other, I flatly refused citing “cruelty to fish”. I then entrusted them to our Fish Friendly cleaning lady upon our departure, who took them away to start their new lives in her fish tank.

So what of the hamsters you ask? Anyone who knows me will tell you that I have the ability to grow intensely attached to any animal, whether it lives ten years, ten months, or ten minutes. It was therefore an exceptionally bad idea for me to ever own a hamster, as they fall somewhere between the ten minute and ten month category. After I had my first hamster put to sleep I cried for three days solid, “NEVER EVER AGAIN!” I wailed, as Dave attempted to console me whilst I wept and snotted everywhere. And I genuinely meant it… Until Dave’s housemate also got a hamster and neglected it so thoroughly I stepped in and… well I nicked it actually, for the greater good! She fattened up nicely and became much more lively and confident and I fell in love all over again. Skip forward another 9 months and I was bawling my eyes out burying the poor little thing in the garden. No more hamsters.

I’m happy to report the kitten is alive and well, and is babied on a daily basis.

So some positive Mothering signs perhaps, if you can count fish and short lived hamsters. On the flip side I do have the tendency to kill any flowering plants that you leave in my care, and I’ve never been very good with cacti, and they’re supposed to be impossible to kill. Not that I’m comparing a barren desert plant, fish or hamsters to babies of course… I feel you’re beginning to get the general picture here!

If I do ever get pregnant however, there is one thing that really, irrationally bothers me. What if I fall on my stomach?

Thinking about it logically I cant actually remember a time when I’ve EVER fallen over and landed flat, face down on my stomach, and I’m a very clumsy person. But I do remember that this thought has worried me ever since I was little and my Mum was pregnant with my sister. I specifically remember helping to shoe horn her off the sofa when she was almost ready to pop, in a sort of “roll and lift” manouvre. I remember being fearful that I might accidentally dump her on the floor face first. I didn’t – in case you’re wondering, and I’m sure this would also have been impossible, since I was only six.

I can only hope that when I do have a child I will remember to take it with me when I leave the house, and to bring it home with me again when I return. I would hate to add actual substance to the family joke!

Just a Bunch of Flowers, Thanks

Working in a job that involves viewing customers’ websites means that I occasionally get to see some eye opening things, that often I wish I hadn’t. Most of the time I have the good sense to shriek with surprise and frantically close the window, shut my eyes and flap my arms about. But there are times when curiosity gets the better of me and I just can’t help myself.

My favourite example so far has to be a site which featured women dressed in fishnet stockings and what looked to be traditional butcher’s hats, repeatedly being slapped with pieces of steak. Not your fancy? Not to worry – there was also a section for chicken and fish, just in case you weren’t the red meat type of guy. I couldn’t help wondering a number of things: What did they do with all of the steak afterwards? Was it the same piece of meat the whole time? Did they have a specialist on-call butcher to ensure they got the most ergonomic meat possible (easy to hold, aerodynamic etc. etc.)? I’m fairly sure these were not the thoughts the site was trying to conjure up.

It also made me vaguely aware there was a possibility that this was simply The Done Thing these days. Perhaps all the cool kids were doing it? Call me old fashioned but I would much prefer a bunch of flowers or a piece of meat to actually eat, thank you very much.

To further my “Things I Never Want to Do” list I recently had the opportunity to meet some members of the tech community who represent the Adult Industry. Pretty normal blokes as it turns out, but they had obviously “seen some things” themselves. One story involved a guy turning up to a dinner party for a perceived evening of cocktails and fine food, only to find that there was a naked man tied up with duck tape, suspended over the table in a large bird cage. At this point I guffawed loudly as I assumed he was joking. Apparently not. The idea was to simply enjoy your poached salmon with garlic and herbed potatoes, and make polite chit chat as if the man in the large cage wasn’t there at all. This is apparently thrilling for all involved. Really? I think that would definitely put me off my crumble and custard. In my personal experience it’s always best to keep the naked men and the food separate. Just saying.

The other phenomenon I experience is men ringing up and requesting tech support for their adult sites, and being absolutely mortified when I’m female. Turns out people that register absolutelydisgustingfilth.com are less than keen to repeat it when a nice lady picks up the phone and says “And what domain name is it that you have registered?”. Cue an awkward silence and a futile attempt on their part to spell it out and avoid embarrassment. As a tip: This doesn’t work, as I always read it out again to confirm I typed it correctly, which is even more bone crushingly embarrassing it turns out.

Really though, if you can’t bear to say it out loud then you shouldn’t have registered it in the first place…